On our last trip to San Francisco, my late husband Steve and I were exceptionally pleased to find the Memorial to the Homosexual Holocaust in The Castro just up 17th Street from Market.  It is lovely with a series of pink marble triangles angled to catch the sunlight.  Really beautiful in its small corner of The City.

In our research of the Homosexual Holocaust, it saddened us to find so many denials of the death and harm of homosexuals by the Nazis.  Much of the denial came from Jews and Christians.  Steve and I never denied that the Nazis murdered and tortured millions more Jews than homosexuals.  that is an undeniable historical fact.  

But that fact does not erase the torture and murder of homosexuals (and gypsies and Russians and Poles and political prisoners and Roman Catholics and Seven Day Adventists and others.)  But homosexuals especially are often denied as victims of the Holocaust and often by Jews.  As evidence they point to the homosexual rapes and crimes perpetrated my the SS guards at the concentration camps.  Why would homosexual guards persecute homosexuals?I do not believe the SS guards were gay.  I believe the SS guards saw homosexual acts as the final degradation and torture.  Therefore they used homosexual acts to torture inmates.  I also believe in situation homosexuality, such as in prison populations.  It is true that many criminal inmates became Kapos and kept homosexual boys.  I believe this was situational homosexuality.  The gay love boys thought so too.

But neither excuses the starvation, beating to death, gassing, medical experiments, forced “suicides”, working to death, and other tortures of homosexuals carried out beginning in 1933.  Homosexuals and political prisoners were the first sent to the concentration camps.  Homosexuals were the last released, in many cases not released.

That s why I am so very excited to see the City of Tel Aviv in Israel building a Memorial the Homosexual victims of the Holocaust.  The design sounds lovely.  Three iron panels will form a triangle.  They will have been buried in the earth, they will rise to the level of an adults waist.  A light will rise from among them and shine heavenwards.  On the inside of the panels will be listed the names of those homosexuals we know where persecuted.  

So many are not known.  For example, all gays in the military were shot immediately if suspected of being gay.  The records list desertion or pneumonia; but the fact is murdered for homosexuality.  Gay Jews wore one yellow triangle and one pink triangle.  They were cast out by Jews and by the SS.  Their death records report them as Jewish, but they died as homosexuals died.

It is a clear day in Tel Aviv when our historical brothers are remembered with a memorial in the country where the Holocaust means the most.  My Steve would have been utterly delighted.  We all should be.  This is a significant step forward for the dignity and respect of all gays and lesbians.

A full story can be found here:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S…

At his death, my husband Steve and I were compiling books, DVDs, and VHS tapes concerning the Holocaust of Homosexuals in Third Reich Germany from 1933 to 1945.  We have a wide variety of source material including two pink triangles worn by our gay brothers in a concentration camp and a prison.  It is now my intention to loan this collection to local libraries as a complete collection once I can properly catalogue it.  Grieving makes things take times.  It is important that Our Story remain alive and told to all.